Cultivator
Universe

Eyes of Infistar word count: 91341

Despite all kinds of craziness around this place (installing wood floors, kids throwing up, car dying) I made my quota for the week.
Yay!

I'm getting pretty close to finishing the rough draft of Eyes. Which realization has set me to thinking of new projects — although that's not as obvious a connection as it might sound, because I already have the next three projects lined up, but I like to plan a long way in advance, and then make changes as necessary. After I draft Eyes, I polish Winds. After I polish Winds, I draft Pavanne. Then on to Asolde II and Ice Wolf II. I want to do two in each setting, because if I sell, I will then have a sequel ready to push right away, I will easily have time to get a third book done before the second one comes out, and I will have given my career the best possible start with three books in a single series coming out at (hopefully) six month intervals.

But if by the time I have finished the second Ice Wolf book I have not sold Cantata, Winds or Eyes, what then? I won't be able to convince myself to go for a book three without some indication that someone would actually be interested in buying the series, I don't think.

So, if this should come to pass, I have decided to take six months away from writing novels, and do an illustrated web-serial or a comic strip of some kind instead. “Starblast in Space” probably. And then I'll pick one of my “Tolsequo” stories to do. (Which don't all take place in Tolsequo but I have to call them something, and calling them my “Shakespeare Stories” might be a bit misleading. These will be on the same world as Cantata, but I don't consider them the same set because they have a very different mood, and they take place on the other side of the continent.) And then I guess I try out the YA series in the Cultivator universe. Why not?

There, that should keep me busy until 2010 or so.

Eyes of Infistar word count: 83972

I didn't quite make my quota, I was just over a thousand short.
Somehow the presence of mildew in the air, always seems to make my brain turn off. It also makes me sleepy.

The mildew also interfered with my preparations for my first meeting at my new Writer's Group (tonight!), too. Not too horribly though, I hope. There were only two ms. up for critique and I've read them both and prepared a few comments (Boyd re-bleached the carpets, and I seem to be doing a bit better today.) My own submission (an outline for Cantata) didn't go up until yesterday, though. Ouch!

Eyes of Infistar word count: 78410

I made my word count for the week.

Eyes of Infistar word count: 72129

I didn't even come close to making my quota this week.
I've been spending the time I usually spend writing making sure my children get caught up in their schoolwork.
Somehow I will work this out, but it might take a while, so the odds of me making next week's quota are not favorable.

Eyes of Infistar word count: 70147

And another quota made.
This time it took me til Friday, but only because I had to go shopping on Tuesday during the time I usually set aside for writing.

Eyes of Infistar word count: 64764

Despite a cold and Thanksgiving I've written my 5000 words for the week already. 🙂
Now I guess I better get on to other things, like, er, housework, and entering the kids' school hours.

Eyes of Infistar word count: 59535

First time I've made a weekly quota since April, but here it is, only Thursday, and officially I'm done for the week.

Secondly…
Number One Son has been reading Cantata in Coral and Ivory and he's been chuckling, and reading his favorite lines aloud to unwary passer-byes, just like he would if it was a Terry Pratchett book, or a Bujold book. ****glow****

Word count for Friday: 35898

I actually did more work on Friday than that shows. Firstly, I did a bit of working out what was really going on, and secondly I took a couple bits I didn't like out of the draft, then I wrote a couple hundred words.

Monday's Word Count: 35800

Friday's Word Count: 34502

I made the week by 26 words. Cutting it close, perhaps, but done.
I have managed to pick up the pace of the action a bit, and I think that's good, I'll probably have to go back to the earlier stuff and ratchet it up a bit, but that's an exersize for the revision stage, right now I just have to get some kind of story down, so it's available to be fixed later.

I have been watching the Lord of the Ring movie commentaries. Movie making documentaries has always interested me, because the stuff they talk about, often sounds a lot like the stuff that I think about as a writer, but they think about the same kind of things several times over: telling the story in dialog, telling it in pictures, telling it in music, telling it in sound…

All I have is words.

And yet all that effort that went into the Lord of the Rings movies, all that creativity and time spent and all that was in an attempt to prove worthy of Tolkien's words — a humbling and inspiring thought.