Hockey

I'll update my NaNo info shortly, but right now I want to complain about the hockey lockout.

I don't have really anything interesting to add.   The man here says it all.  I spent all of the Thanksgiving Holiday trying to get as excited about Football as I do about Hockey.  It's a good thing I had family to distract me or I might have become depressed.

Stupid greedy bastards.  Don't ask me to whom I refer.  I am mad at the entire organization right now.  The owners particularly but even the players who I don't feel are as outraged and depressed as we fans.  Nobody could be as outraged and depressed as people living in Los Angeles who have Lord Stanley's Cup here for the first time and can't even throw the party for it! 

razzlefrazzleratfink as the cartoon dog used to say.

One of the things I miss the most is the comforting NHL.com site where I could wander for hours, my brain on half-speed, while recovering from the food and family hangover I have today.

Instead I have to write. 

I hope everyone had a lovely holiday!

still slugging away

Sunday I wrote a little over five hundred words.  I lifted, deleted, rewrote and tightened about 4500, so coming out ahead was a small miracle.  Except I'm not done deleting.

I was in the car for around six hours yesterday.  My clutch-side leg is killing me, from riding it through traffic.  The 'stang needs a physical soon.  As I expected, I wasn't able to write anything.  I did pound out a little this morning, but I can't write at work, so I might not catch up to my writing deadlines until Turkey Day.  I'm cooking, but I got a lot done over the weekend, so I'll have a little free time.

Without hockey and with the Bears looking so bad it hurts my eyes, the only sports I can stand to watch are college bowls. 

Then, last night, I downloaded 'The Back Passage' by James Lear, as a tiny reward to myself.

I can't recall where I first heard of this author, but I've been looking forward to reading his books.  What is it about that slightly amused, facetious and yet basically good humored voice that I find so charming?  I've run into it before in gay literature and, believe it or not, in Jane Austin.  It's clever and wise but doesn't whine.  It isn't sappy or preachy.  It's not that it is or isn't politically incorrect so much as it is apolitical.  Things are what they are.  Life is a great big charming, if sometimes disappointing, story.  And in the end its all about getting off.

Throw in a gloriously dead body and I'm a happy reader.

I love it.  I'm afraid it's like a candy bar, though.  I can't help but read it quickly and then, too soon, I will have read the whole series. 

The Color Not-quite-purple

I didn't write yesterday because I was getting the guest room ready for Thanksgiving.
This old house has popcorn ceiling texture that is unbearably ugly.  Room by room, I'm getting rid of it.  The first room I did was the office, so I could sit here and find excuses to not write.  Scraping the ceiling, repainting it with this awesome stuff called 'ceiling paint'.  Then prepping and painting the walls, two coats even with the 'paint-with-primer' paint.  Then the trim.  It takes at least one day for a small room.  The office took two days because I painted it with this gorgeous paint by Ralph Lauren called 'suede', which requires a second coat to be applied with a hand brush.

Anyway, now my guest room is amethyst.  On the little sample card it looked sophisticated and sort of warm.  On the walls it is suspiciously close to grape.  I think it will be okay if I am careful with the accent colors and stuff.

Tomorrow I have to go to the dentist.  I've bought a house a way out from the city, so going to the dentist means leaving at 4:30 to get to the gym, work out, get dressed and drive for an hour and a half.  This means I probably won't be able to write tomorrow either.  So I got up super early today to write.

Argh.  I have to delete a huge chunk.  I've got two hours to write before the gym opens.  I still have a lot of cleaning and grocery shopping and baking to do today, so I'm going to try to get my 1000 words done in two hours.  ha.  I'll let you know how it goes.

I am not writing today and I am crabby...

... and my eyes itch.

My hair is frizzy and I'm hungry and dinner is three hours away. 

Grrr.

598

Deleted 1100 but I'm still up by 598.

I'm feeling good about this now.  Of course, it's 5 a.m. and I'm always an optimist first thing in the morning.  There is one enormous plot hole that needs to be worked, but the characters just fell into place.

Off to the gym.

1648

I've finally written more than I've deleted and almost enough for the NaNoWriMo requirement of words per day.  Yesterday I wrote 1648 of new material.

It's coming along.  I was horribly stuck and so changed my pov.  I'm not sure if I will keep it for the final but with the enormous cast of characters in this book, it is helpful.

Two Unrelated Things

Well, I've hit the bottom of the deletion cycle, I think.  I wrote 500 words today beyond what I deleted.  There is still a lot to get rid of, but the character arcs have tightened somewhat.  I feel so insecure about this book.  I don't know who this dude is sometimes!

Also, I read a blog post somewhere in which an author complained about authors who talk about politics.  Now, I am one of those people who believes that the personal is political.  That you really can't separate the two.  But I appreciate that my readers may not want to hear my diatribes. 

Those of you who feel that way should probably stop reading now.

The GOP made a fatal mistake this election.  They did not LOOK at the American people.  They looked at the fantasy in their heads in which the vast majority of Americans are white protestants, who hate immigrants, intellectuals, liberated women, foreigners, homosexuals and any race not their own.  And now they will have to wake the Ef up or there will be no Republican party in the future.

Maybe the Green party will be the next challenger?  I could go for that.

Thank God.

Writing backwards

Yesterday I 'fixed' a chapter.  Which means I wrote 1000 words more or less, but deleted about 1800.  I'm down 685.  I don't know if it's better or worse, but at least I'm working on it.

word count

Yesterday was a miserable writing day.  Wrote only 500 and deleted 900.  So I'm down 400.  Today I am approaching the problem area.  If I can just work this part out I might start making some progress.

Day Two

Yesterday I wrote 1200 words and deleted 900, so I'm at 300.  So sad, but that's how it goes.

I may have mentioned 'If Not for You' some time ago, when I first started it.  I sometimes start books and finish them years later.  This one is about a wheeling dealing stockbroker, Eric Tack, living in San Francisco, who is trying to recover from the crash of 2008.  He hears that the man he loved and lost has been murdered and that he, Eric, has been named in the man's will. 

The entire book takes place in Humboldt County, up in the Redwood National Forest, where so many grow houses, legal and illegal, exist.  I got stuck on one of the main character's personalities.  I couldn't seem to nail him down which, you can imagine, created a major problem.  I've written the beginning and the end.  I'm kind of flopping around in the middle trying to get a grip.

NaNoWriMo

I've never done it but it seems like it might be the kick in the butt I need, so I'm going to do the NaNoWriMo on 'If Not for You' this month.

Today is my first day.  The book is 62,638 words currently, and I don't expect to publish more than 90,000 but if you knew my process you would weep for me.  This is the point in my novels where I start savagely brutalizing my story.  Cutting out characters, scenes, chapters.  For every word I write, I delete at least another word somewhere else.  So.  If I can write 50,000 and delete 20,000 I should be doing well.

I'll blog about the journey.  It will probably be boring.  Day after day of:  wrote 1200, deleted 1200, but I am going to finish this book and I'm going to be happy with it when it's done!