I’ve been working on the beginning of La Cause, trying to find my way into the story. I’ve stepped back to the outline again, and it’s at last let me past the first roadblock. My stories seem to wander down cul de sacs and get turned around, and it can be very hard to find where the wrong turning took place. It may be that the turn just was made too soon and there are no wrong parts, just things in the wrong order. Hard to figure that out sometimes without tearing things apart first.

I’ve made a bit more progress on SanClare Scarlet, but I’m backburnering that for now so I can focus on La Cause. The stories are just too different to try to work on at the same time, especially with La Cause still being new territory I’m discovering. It’s hard not to work on the next SanClare book, though. I love those characters very much and want to get them to their next adventure. If only I wrote faster…

I have a new short story done I need to go back and edit. I rarely write short, so this was a fun change of pace. Now that I’ve let it sit for a bit, it should be ready to be reviewed with clear eyes. I hope I still like it as much during the editing as I did during the writing.

Denvention is less than a month away now. I need a vacation and some quality time with friends and fen. Can’t wait. I’ll have just had a birthday, so if anyone wants to bring me a present, feel free ;)

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I’m finessing the beginning of La Cause.  I had an idea on the treadmill and began to hear narration in Sophie’s voice which I believe is the first time that’s happened with La Cause.  I wish I had a more traditional approach to plotting. I often feel like my plotting resembles a day of shopping–so much trying on and trying on until one finds the perfect outfit. 

The metaphor extends: Or doesn’t find the perfect outfit and one has to go out shopping again the next day.

I’m at 16,795 words on La Cause. So catching up and making the 50K target might be a bit of a job, but I’m not despairing yet. I’m still really pleased with how things are going.

In the grand tradition of Being Me, I started the novel too far into the story.  I do love to in medias res things up, but this happened in early drafts of SanClare Black, too, where I started so far into the story, I would have ended up having to do  a lot of klunky flash-backing to get certain scenes to make any sense at all and then they make no sense because you’re flashing-back every few sentences to explain things.  Awkward.  So what do I do while working on La Cause? The same damn thing. So yesterday and today’s wordage was all about going back and putting a new beginning on the story. 

It all starts with a game of hide ‘n’ seek in the woods–a sort of mutant version that bears much more of a resemblance to the game “ghost in the graveyard” my brothers and friends and I used to play when we were little which was sort of hide ‘n’ seek meets tag but played at night. There were other rules, too…

Childhood used to be so much fun. I feel sorry for modern kids who don’t seem to get (or even want) to roam the neighborhood, playing all kinds of crazy, made-up games and only coming home when their dad’s shout or whistle called them in for supper.

I am behind.  Simple math says I should be at 18350 words, but I’m only at 12750.  No biggie.  I’m very happy with my progress on La Cause, and I can should be able to catch up for the NaNo goal if all goes well.  I’m just pleased that it’s moving along so well when it was being such a fussbudget in earlier draftings. 

This is instead the, “Yes, I’m doing NaNoWriMo!” and ”Yes, I will post a Con Report soon!” post.

I’m averaging about 1000 words a day so far for my Nano book; not on target for the Recommended Daily Average, but as I was a bit busy during those first few days, I’m doing pretty well.

WFC was so much fun, but to do a proper report takes energy, and I’m still very tired-out.  All energy regained was used up with errand-running and catching-up-from-weekend today.  So maybe tomorrow. 

First readers still approve!  I’m into chapter four now after some minor, improving edits suggested by said first readers and just wrestled through another of those transition scenes that always bog me down.  When I was first writing, I had the habit of just ending scenes abruptly and moving to the next important moment or scene, skipping over the Very Irksome Transitions.  Of course, this made things very choppy, so I cannot recommend it.  These days, I prefer to deal with the VITs as I go rather than doing a full “smooth crappy transitions” revision run-through later.

 But yay.

Also, Nano looks like a go, so I need to review my notes for La Cause and make sure I’m read to Do This Thing!  I tried in 2005 and didn’t have a good enough grasp of my idea so gave up.  I used 2006’s Nano month to work on major revisions to SanClare Black (didn’t quite make my personal target but came very close; didn’t count for “real” Nano in any case), but this year, I’m going to try to do it correctly and stick to it.  Just ’cause I think it might be a fun and liberating way to get a really bloody awful first draft of La Cause done.  I’m already telling myself to just write whatever including “this part sucks; fix later” and then DO the VITs and move on, always aiming for the final 50k target.

That’s my idea, at least.  We shall see.

I just finished chapter three of SanClare Scarlet (2.0), and I still really like the new direction, but it’s off to the first readers again for a gut-check.  As I said when I started this draft, I give up on word counters, but I’m just shy of 12K which, considering SanClare Black clocks in at about 125K, puts me at about 10%.  So.  That’s good.

Nanowrimo starts in a couple of weeks, and I think I’ll put making major progress on the book my Nano project.  Either that, or I’ll do La Cause as my Nano project–and idea I like rather better since it needs the jump-start more.  Hrm… Well, we’ll see how I feel closer to time.

Of course, it doesn’t help that I’ll be out of town the first few days of November at World Fantasy about which I am EXTREMELY excited.  But I’ve never been before, so–any advice anyone?  Stuff I should know? Stuff I should do? Stuff I should pack?

No “progress” tonight, but I did write 1,200 words on the backstory of La Cause.  I looked up more pictures of aforementioned Inspirational Model Girl, and, while none of the rest of them struck me as Sophie-esque, I do think those few from the magazine were enough to help me move closer to knowing who she is.  I ripped those pages out to refer to later.  I need to buy a tack-board or something for my office so I don’t have a pile random papers cluttering up the desk.

I’ve been dabbling around trying to figure out the way magic works in this world.  It needs to be very structured and organized and almost academic, but there are also hidden, much wilder strains out there.   I think I may have it figured out after tonight. 

I also found a great site with detailed, fin-de-siecle maps of Europe.  I am now trying to come up with alt-names for my violently reworked Europe.  Some things won’t change much (France); some things won’t change much, but will have very different names (Great Britain, for backstory reasons I may never spell out in the story); and I may just make some things up entirely.  All the good alt-London names seem to be taken…  This will be an Edwardian-flavored Europe still very much riddled with principalities and kingdoms randomly sprinkled all around the behemoth nations.  It is also a world teetering on the precipice of violent change–some of it good but much of it Very Bad and To Be Avoided If At All Possible.

 

Ye Agent asked a couple of questions on his blog about process.  Here they are with my answers:

What is your favorite part of the writing process?
I don’t have a favorite part. I like pretty much every part of the process. After about the zillioneth round of editing the same thing, I can get pretty sick of it, but otherwise, I do like it all.

What do you do when you know you’ve done something wrong and haven’t yet figured out what the source of that wrongness is?
That depends on the work in progress. If it’s something I’m steeped in (such as the SanClare books), I almost never get that stuck. I go back and reread, and the bit that’s gumming up the flow usually reveals itself. With a newer piece (such as La Cause Sociériste), I generally go back to the plotting and look for the problem there. If I get really hung up (short stories — not my forte), I hand it to my First Readers to diagnose.

What would your answers be?

Back to SanClare Scarlet tonight.  My leapfrog plotting on La Cause is still being mentally revised.  I need to nail down the ending which is vaguely defined at the moment, and I need to sort out which of several candidates will win the fight for Central Plot.  I did find a picture in a magazine this weekend that the moment I saw it, I thought, “That’s Sophie-Katrine!”  And the looks of this model led me to figure out more about Sophie’s mysterious (but not dead and in-the-story somewhat) mother which is helping frame the whole backstory in a new and fun way. 

In the meantime, conflict enters the father/son-esque relationship of two of the main characters in SanClare Scarlet.  People aren’t speaking to each other.  Someone is justifiably angry about secrets kept from him.  And they haven’t even reached the capital yet!

In spite of the incredible tennis tonight (Venus! Jelena! Roger! Andy!), I still managed to get a bit of wordage in.  That’s Chapter One all done.

Not a bad night’s work, considering I’ve neglected this story for so long.  I was letting it simmer on my mental backburner.  I know the main character of SanClare Scarlet so well, it’s easy to write him.  Sophie is someone I’m still getting to know, which makes the going a bit slower.  I like her, though.  I wrote a scene tonight where I think I found out a key thing about her.  Here’s the pivotal snippet:

When she’d finally climbed into bed sometime later, left alone by her maid and Polly and faced with her own thoughts, she had to dig her nails into her palms to keep the tears at bay. All she wanted was to fix things, but she’d already made so many mistakes. She wished more than anything that she had John’s courage and Polly’s gumption, but she was only Sophie. And that had never yet been good enough.

“Life!  Don’t talk to me about life!” — Marvin from Hitchhiker’s Guide

Real Life^TM has been busy and full of stuff and traveling and exhaustion, so no actual typing on books has been done since my last post (le sigh).  However, that doesn’t mean the work hasn’t been ongoing.  During my long, very damp drives through the state of Indiana, I worked on the backstory and plot of La Cause.  This idea is still new and shiny and not fully-formed, so any thinking time I get to spend on figuring out this new world and its people, I use.  The important part of writing is the putting-the-words-down part, but the percolating, thinking, planning, etc., time is essential, too.   It just can’t be all that gets done, or I’m basically a daydreamer and not a writer.

So this weekend, there will be much typing.  With La Cause it may all be notes and scribbles about the story and no actual wordage, but with Scarlet, there will be word-counter progress made!

Right after lunch…

I went to a lovely coffee shop today for several hours and worked on my notes for the Next Novel which required much referencing of early 20th Century info via Wikipedia.  This place has killer wireless and plugs beside most of their tables and really scrumptious pastries and, I must add, very attractive barista boys.  

Most of the wiki articles I looked at were heavily footnoted in the proper fashion, so I'm pretty sure no one was making up things like the common names for tuberculosis and the span of the reigns of various British monarchs, and it is so amazingly useful to have that to do preliminary fact-checking.  Of course for actual, final fact-checking, there needs to be more work, more sources reviewed, and in some cases, just some of the reference links followed to confirm.  It's pretty amazing that so many people can contribute to something and make it so useful.  

I think I have a good half to two-thirds of the plot hammered out.  I need to figure out the details of the ending and decide if there is going to be a romantic leading man.  I think there might be, but the plot does not require him.  However, a role could easily be filled by him which would not be simply Romantic Leading Man... I think I want him to be something like Charles in Cold Comfort Farm -- sort of wonderful and scruffy and surprising and inevitable. 

I'm also going to have a bash at writing this one in first person.  I think it will work; Alice has a voice and things to say, but I'm not certain the plot will work this way, so I'm going to take a running start at it and see how things progress.

I've spent the last few days reworking my query hook, trying to shorten my synopsis, and, tonight, plotting out a new novel that has NOTHING to do with SanClare Black.  I don't know if I can manage to work on two books at once, so I may work on the outlines for sequels One and Two (or SanClare Red and SanClare Gold as I'm calling them in my head) while writing this Other Book instead.  

Other Book involves more research as it is something of an alternate history (sort of... not really but sort of) and needs to have certain facts correct even if the larger story is Wildly Made Up.  I'm pretty into this idea, so I think I'd better run with it.  Once I get the book plotted out, I'll give myself a deadline, and we'll see how fast I can write it!

Still mulling over the short story idea for a specific submission.  It's burbling on the backbrain.  I have the protags, the antags, the set-up, and a good idea of the conflict; I just need to figure out how it's going to resolve, and I should be able to start scribbling.  This one is set well back in the history of the world where SanClare Black takes place.