Raccciman’s World

…when they have no choice but to learn everything about it?I was entering the lyrics to the Flame and Steel Black Flag song into the music program today (couldn’t remember one of the verses and had to go hunt down the scrap of paper I wrote it on… ended up finding it in my Scent of Spring binder ?!?!) and I walked into the kitchen caroling “…He without the strength to stay me, will be trampled as I pass…”

“Mom, what are you singing?”

So I obligingly started at the beginning. “I was born a pirate’s daughter, I was bred to take command. All I am I freely offer: warrior’s heart and killer’s hand…”

“Oh. It’s a Bonnie Anne song.”

Instant character recognition. That means I’m doing something right?

Dicing With Flames passed the 80 000 word mark today, and is now officially longer than Talking With Winds

I went way over my quota today. Nearly double. Wrote almost a whole chapter from Samanth’s point of view without even noticing how much I was over, and now I’ll have to go back and switch the second half of it into Tomah’s pov (losing a rather nice description of the villain in the process). :sigh:

But I have finally gotten Asond back into a situation where he gets to be brilliant, snarky and more triumphant than troubled, and we’re fast approaching the end, and all I have to do is get that pesky bad guy out of the way, and then I get to do the final scenes that I’ve been anticipating since back when I was working on Book One. (Now I’m anticipating final scenes from Book Three, of course, which I likely won’t be writing for at *least* a couple years, and more likely closer to three. My muses are always so mean to me! )

I always have trouble holding myself back when I get to this point in a book. It’s a rush, but it’s also very wearing.Which is a pity because I’ve finally got my space armor deconstructed, (so I can do images of it opened up and my space pirates stepping into and out of it) and I could have gotten back to work on the next page in Black Flag if I had any oompha left over. 🙁

Dicing With Flames: 75472 wordsI passed the 75 000 word mark today, so I thought I’d post the count. 🙂

This one is going to be longer than Talking With Winds. I can’t possibly finish it in the next 5000 words; I’ve still got to get them to a battle, and through a battle, and do the wrap up.

Dicing With Flames is back in production.I’m not up to full speed yet, but while nattering in rec.arts.sf.compostion about what all I’m working at, I got a ‘sounds fascinating’ about Song of Asolde, a ‘sounds fun’ about Eyes of Infistar, and a ‘will you get these stories finished already!’ about Black Flag all within a 24 hour span, so I’m feeling too happy-bouncy right now to angst over being 1105 words shy of my week’s quota.

Dicing With Flames, words to date: 60566.

If this one is the same length as Talking With Winds was, I'm about three quarters of the way done. 🙂

It seems to me the longer I've not gone out anywhere in person, the less likely I am to do any social interacting online. That's a little odd, isn't it? Shouldn't I be doing more online stuff in an attempt to compensate?

Lately I've written about ten times more responses to rec.arts.sf.composition postings than I've a actually posted. I keep going “no one wants to hear you ramble on about yourself or your stories”, and I delete them. When I went to post this I had the option of restoring a draft of an entry about getting some more rejections slips, which I had decided against posting. I haven't even had Bonnie Anne or Talon respond to the latest questions posted on the character chat thread over at the Webcomic List forums.

So I decided that at the very least I should make a progress update type lj posting.

I am back to writing again, after taking three weeks off to crit a novel for a crit buddy. (Unfortunately I slept through a good chunk of those three weeks, so she didn't get three weeks worth of crit out of it.) :sigh:

Dicing With Flames passed 53K yesterday. Yay! Forward motion!
But I don't seem to have enough energy to work on two things at once, so Black Flag and Scent of Spring are stalled.
The in-my-head theater has mostly been running Black Flag 4 & 5. (Why does it have to be five? That's the icky one.)

Dicing With Flames: 50270 words

And behold at the week's commence I did send out a query requesting information about the submission that has languished now at the same house for nigh on these two years.

And this very day did I receive an most courteous answer…

And the answer was neither yes,
nor no.

It is, I am informed, still “on the list”.

And I, not having devised any schemes or actions to take in such a case,
intend to do nothing.

I am, after all, busy writing the next… er, fourth book.

(Poor, Asond! He so hates to be wrong, and I have been putting him in situations where there isn't a right answer. I suspect he will have something pithy and very annoyed to say on the subject tomorrow.)

Today's wordcount: 29600

No, I did not round it off. 🙂

Edit: Apparently I need to clarify…
That's a total words in book wordcount.
The number of words written that day was only a thousand and some, as usual.

I just thought it was neat… er, tidy. Stopping on an even hundred like that. My wordprocessor doesn't keep a running count (I wouldn't want it to if it could, I'd find it too distracting), and I had no idea what number I had gotten to until after I stopped and told it to add 'em all up.

Chapter eight of the Complete Idiot's Guide to Music Theory ends by asking you to write three short tunes to certain specifications. ( I cheated a little on the third one. I *could* have notated it in 4/4 time like it asked, but it was so much easier notate in 12/8.)

And now I have these three tunes, see, and I find myself wondering … 'So what am I going to do with them?'
Could someone please convince me that I don't actually have to do anything with them at all?

They are nagging at me now. The first one wants another eight measures, the second one is interested in being expanded also, if I would be so kind, and they all want lyrics so that I might possibly end up singing them somewhere or something. Arrg!

In other news, I've got about 25K words of the second Asolde book, and I did two more Black Flag pages, but my father just asked me to take on a large project for him.