Drowning Nor Waving

June 9, 2013 Progress Notes:

On Roadstead Farm

Words today: 1000.
Words total: 94,700.
Reason for stopping: Sleepy.

Darling du Jour: Three regiments of soldiers leaning in from behind their torches; watching me breath-caught. Memorizing every detail of my tattered coat, my bleeding hands, the mud caking my work boots.

Mean Things: Solving our problems with violence; broke another tree; decisions, decisions, decisions.

Research Roundup: N/A.
Books in progress: matociquala, Range of Ghosts.

---

All right, here we go.  Home stretch.

Finished Chapter 26, and then flitted around for a while, tying stuff up in the denouement and closing holes, one by one.

I thought this book had no more surprises to give me, but it took more than an hour to figure out how all this thematic weight of everything plays into the end of that final battle.  And then I did, and...oh. It is nice that, even at this late and exhausted point in drafting this book (which as the prior posted noted, is a novel and stupid) it can still make me feel things.

There are maybe three scenes left.  I need a nap.

June 8, 2013 Progress Notes:

On Roadstead Farm

Words today: 3000.
Words total: 92,600.
Reason for stopping: My hands are curling into deadline claws again.

Darling du Jour: When I opened them, the river was a disaster of scattered metal. The long-preserved bodies of our old cities ancestors were sinking in their ancient graves. They bobbed, and went under, whispering their steel farewells.

Mean Things: Broke the Ambassador Bridge.  A few Tunguska-event-scale explosions.  Getting treed by pissy feral dogs.  Gave Hallie her chance.  It be slim, dear.  Don't fuck it up.

Research Roundup: Wild dog attacks, anatomy thereof; beetles indigenous to the Detroit area; decomposition time of human bones; a reasonable size for a small-acreage farm; how far people can see with the naked eye; the Tunguska event; bridge collapses; how to make lye soap; what tarnished gold looks like.
Books in progress: matociquala, Range of Ghosts.

---

I've pretty much officially gone nocturnal now.  This is generally a bad thing.  For marathon writing sessions, though, I don't mind so much.  I will let it be until there's a finished draft on my goddamned desk.

Back into Chapter 22 to clean up some sloppiness in the line and keep things focused, and then hopping scene to scene, finishing things as I go.  There were about fifteen scenes left when I started.  Now we're at something more like eight or nine, depending on how things split in the final accounting.  I got a lot of work done today.

I've written all of Chapter 24, because it had explosions and chases and was generally sweet, and most of Chapter 25 for similar ass-kicking reasons.  Chapter 23 is almost done, too; one scene left in it, but it's a tricky one, and involved.  Best left for tomorrow, when I can focus narrowly again.

I put in some kittens who are cute and survive the book's proceedings to make P. happy, as it was established that I have a racial prejudice and indiscriminately kill cats, while letting even vicious, feral puppies live.  Equality is restored.

Every ragged thing anyone else has ever said about finishing novels makes sense now.

Going to read a bit, just to cool my brain down and feed it full of words that aren't my own.  And then going to bed, to try to sleep before dawn.

June 6, 2013 Progress Notes:

On Roadstead Farm

Words today: 3000.
Words total: 87,000
Reason for stopping: Sunrise.  Oopsie.

Darling du Jour: She appraised all of us like a general storekeeper: hard-faced with hard living, weights and measures in her eyes.

Mean Things: Only one other person gets your life-changing experience, and you're mad at him right now.  War!

Research Roundup: Whether a scare affects goats in the milking way.
Books in progress: matociquala, Range of Ghosts.

---

Okay, so we had our pho and watched the end of the He-Man/She-Ra movie.  Newsflash: Skeletor is an MRA.

June 3-4, 2013 Progress Notes:

On Roadstead Farm

Words today: 400 yesterday, 1700 today.
Words total: 86,100.
Reason for stopping: My hands are giving out.  And P. is home from work, and now we shall make dinner.  I committed to a contribution of roasted asparagus and grape tomatoes with garlic and olive oil and mmm--

Darling du Jour: A place where sound and air and light just…weren't. Where you could cut the belly from a storm; slice open the throat of a clear night sky.
I looked back, a half-dozen or a thousand steps into my homestead. There was a name for this after all; the infinitesimal and unbridgeable ground between me and warm fires of home. It was the distance between people: The ones you loved, the ones you hated. Everyone in the universe was farther away than the stars.

Mean Things: Blew up a tree!  Wildfires!  Ultimate, awful lostness.  The choice, small and echoing, at the middle of this whole thing.  Taking, as Scott Pilgrim puts it, a look at yourself.

Research Roundup: Kinds of fiddle music; how biracial babies can vary on the melanin spectrum.
Books in progress: matociquala, Range of Ghosts.

---

Kind of unintentionally, I took the weekend off.  I woke up Saturday and my hands were curling up with RSI, and decided that they, and my brain, needed to recover a little bit or things were going to get unproductively bad around here.  And this seems to have been the right decision.  My palms don't viscerally hurt right now, and P. noted last night, after what was a bit of a pushy, partial work day, that I seemed in a much better mood: that I was cooking again, and singing while I did it.

But time is moving, and If I do not finish the book this week I'll just have to do it next week.

So we're back to HOW I SAVED THE WORLD TO PUT OFF CLEANING THE HENHOUSE:

Back through what I had of Chapter 19, and to the end of it.  I feel right now that it is flimsy and awful.  I'm not sure if that's just the mental fatigue talking, or if it is kind of awful, but either way, that'll get fixed in the next draft and not now.  Rocked right through Chapter 20, and we are into Chapter 21.  Best thing: I have found the turn.  I found the choice that makes everything after.  I am trying to treat it carefully, with space, and light, and love.

That is the end of the section.

I am also mildly annoyed because there is a character I have thought about making queer, because it spikes a stereotypical thing.  But then it spikes the non-stereotypical thing I've been setting up all book, so.  FEH.

The rest of Chapter 21 goes down tomorrow.  I probably have four or five more left after that, depending on how fast they get their act together, and how much I don't want to be drafting and just make the plot go.

May 30, 2013 Progress Notes:

On Roadstead Farm

Words today: 700.
Words total: 82,700.
Reason for stopping: Bedtime cometh.  And I promised I'd be there before three tonight.

Darling du Jour: A bitter laugh bubbled out of me. It echoed on the stones. "You bet it isn't safe," I snapped, and Nat grabbed my elbow: Careful. There were knives out, here. There were shovels.
Someone was going to die.

Mean Things: Death by invasive species, because I'm hardcore; not being sure exactly who's going to lynch whom.

Research Roundup: Effects of running in winter air.
Books in progress: matociquala, Range of Ghosts.

---

P. made mango shrimp for dinner.  Best P. ever.

Just a little bit more tonight: It's late, but I wanted to get over the 2,000-word hump for the day.  So I went over Chapter 17 and what I have of Chapter 18 again to squeeze out all the Suck Juice, and they are both somewhat improved.  Moral: Eat vegetables and protein when writing words.  They make the brain go better.

Tomorrow is a weirdly staggered day, because I have a long-standing appointment for a haircut, and so there will be an hour or two where I can't actually wreck my wrists on this.  I need to spend that time wisely.  Possibly reading.  This well could stand some filling back up.

More tomorrow.  General goals: Finish Chapter 18.  Maybe Chapter 19 too.  Slide merrily down the downslope of the third act.

May 29, 2013 Progress Notes:

On Roadstead Farm

Words today: 1,500.
Words total: 80,300.
Reason for stopping: It is kind of 3:30am.

Darling du Jour: He looked down at me, startled; a too-young man with a bird, a shaft of sunlight in his hand.

Mean Things: Realizing just how complicated one's fucked-up parent actually was; a non-trivial depressive crash.

Research Roundup: N/A.
Books in progress: matociquala, Range of Ghosts.

---

Round two, because I promised myself I'd break 80,000 words tonight.

Tonight in HOW I SAVED THE WORLD TO PUT OFF CLEANING THE HENHOUSE:

Into Chapter 17 and a somewhat unexpected direction, which doesn't take me off-outline, but...considering what conflicts were set up in the early days of this thing I suppose I should've seen it all coming.  It is...still not where I thought we would be.  But there's a line or two in Chapter 16 that touches the very heart of the thing, and you don't do that without a consequence.

Things are sombre right now.  And somewhat heartbroken.  And somewhat true.  At least if you're going to hit a crash, you have access to people with coping tools.  There is that.

Tomorrow, hopefully we kill the rest of Chapter 17.  And then, well.  Shit gets real.

May 28, 2013 Progress Notes:

On Roadstead Farm

Words today: 1,800.
Words total: 77,100.  Contract length is 80,000 to 90,000 words, and luckily, what I have here is the file count, not the continuous, otherwise I'd be going way over.
Reason for stopping: Have to go to pick up some essentials of the toiletpaper/toothpaste variety before the drugstore closes.

Darling du Jour: Tyler's hand tightened on mine. It wasn't under the table anymore; I'd lifted it with me when I stood up, and Nat was watching it: the hinge where Tyler's fingers slipped through my own.

Mean Things: A little dissension in the ranks now that the shit's hitting the fan; a painful reminder that if you don't chop wood while the world's ending, your glorious victory will be marred by still freezing to death; trigger city for a poor secondary character; a growing tendency to, and discomfort with, pathological lies; how parents assume it's grandchildren time the second you look smoulderingly at someone; finally, absolutely, losing your shit.

Research Roundup: How to leach lye for soap; preparing goats for winter weather; "great-grandmother" in German.
Books in progress: matociquala, Range of Ghosts.

---

For once I came up with the first lines of a project in bed, at three in the morning, half-asleep enough to want to--but not actually be able to--reach out and grab a pen and notebook, and still remembered them in the morning.  There's a file now, for later.  The idea's still good.

I will write so much short fiction when this thing is done.

But all this is set aside for YE OLDE TALE OF PEOPLE GETTING INTO EACH OTHER'S BUSINESS (ALSO MONSTERS).

Back into Chapter 15, at the sticky bit, and through it.  Apparently I did need to show something onscreen that I'd been eliding.  That got me through into Chapter 16, and I filled out a whole bunch of that.

750 more words trashed out of the file.  I counted this time.

Also, Hallie has been reminded that she still needs to do chores even in the face of the world ending.  Given her to do list when the book started, the plot of this novel has been the greatest procrastination stunt ever pulled off.  I may have to retitle to HOW I SAVED THE WORLD TO PUT OFF CLEANING THE HENHOUSE.

Back soon for a second round.  I am almost out of toiletpaper.  It needs fixing.

May 26, 2013 Progress Notes:

On Roadstead Farm

Words today: 2,200.
Words total: 73,300.
Reason for stopping: I've been at this all day, and it's past two.

Darling du Jour: The sheep hopped over it as if it were nothing: delicately placing each foot on the drifts and sinking, startled, in. They milled, confused, on the strand and the river road, not quite understanding where their soft pasture had gone. They reminded me of Marthe: constantly bewildered that the ground wasn't where they'd left it.

Mean Things: Not having shared a piece of information for fear people will think you're crazy, and the first response you get is...well; shit getting most positively real; being informed you're bad at sneaking; something more, and more important, to lose.

Research Roundup: What lizards eat; a summer sausage recipe; winter grazing of sheep.
Books in progress: matociquala, Range of Ghosts.

---

Took yesterday off for a bookstore shift, a grocery run, and an evening field trip with P.'s workfriends to the David Dunlap Observatory to look through a 1930s-built (!), 74-inch telescope (!!) at Saturn (!!!).  The first person to spot the rings on Saturn must have utterly lost their mind, because guys, I nearly did.

But today we are back to YE OLDE TALE OF PEOPLE GETTING INTO EACH OTHER'S BUSINESS (ALSO MONSTERS).

Pretty much put paid to Chapter 14 today (still needs a few transitions), and did some forward framing work on Chapter 15 and beyond, into the climax.  I made up an awesome creepy monster, and did as good writing advice told me and Burned Plot.  Also finally found a place for a scenelet I wrote as one of the first things, period, on this book, over a year and a half ago.  It's nice that that won't have to go in the bin.

Best thing?  I figured out how they solve this thing. Using monster physics and something I put there a year ago just because I thought it was cool.  Booyah.

More trash has come out of the file, too; probably another thousand words' worth of old ideas and wrong directions and stuff there just isn't a place for anymore.  So realistically I probably did half again this number today to make up for it, but for accountability's sake, we're only going to count what takes us forward.

Okay.  Time for a quick snack.  And then time for bed.

May 23, 2013 Progress Notes:

On Roadstead Farm

Words today: 1500.
Words total: 70,000.
Reason for stopping: P. is home with Vietnamese.  We're going to make a mango salad to go with it, because I has a recipe.

Darling du Jour: "I need you, Thom," she said again, and her pockets were empty of river stones. Her hand stilled on the last three; they fell, and ran through her fingertips. The stars glowed, gap-toothed, silent, and my breath held, wishing for magic. Wishing for a miracle.
The minutes stretched. The word-spell bowed under their weight and shattered.

(Alternately: "Marthe had lived on Roadstead Farm long enough to know this wasn't a place prayers were answered." I have two today.)

Mean Things: Hiding someone with the junk and broken things, and fully realizing that as a metaphor; magic, when it does not work; raw, unfiltered grief; making me cry; excellent grossness; an impromptu stoning, and not the drug-related kind.

Research Roundup: Mapwork, as figuring out what towns survived the apocalypse and which didn't is a continuing challenge; the colour of unoxygenated blood.
Books in progress: matociquala, Range of Ghosts.

---

Dreams about snakes last night.  I do not like snakes.

Today in YE OLDE TALE OF PEOPLE GETTING INTO EACH OTHER'S BUSINESS (ALSO MONSTERS):

A quick fix-it pass on Chapter 12, and most of Chapter 13 knocked down, as well as a bit of general forward through this little arc.  We have officially broken the 70,000-word threshold.  I don't imagine I'll keep that, though; there's a lot in this file that's stale-dated, debris of directions this book isn't going anymore.  Things are going to come out; a bunch of things came out today, in fact.  I have no idea what the actual functional wordcount is right now, or what of the bits forward are going to be kept.

I made myself cry.  That...felt good, to do that again.

Further: It's interesting how I forget that this is functionally and structurally epic fantasy, as well as Sinclair Lewis/Margaret Laurence Canadian literary fiction.  The amount of details, maps, characters, distances to keep in my head just balloons more every day.  The notes file has doubled in the last week or so.  It gives me ideas for a front-piece map, which would in and of itself be a wonderfully genre-subversive thing to do, given that this is a story where, largely, the protagonist does not leave home.

Dinner.  I'll finish this chapter and take on the next tomorrow.

May 21, 2013 Progress Notes:

On Roadstead Farm

Words today: 2050.
Words total: 67,500.
Reason for stopping: P. is home, with both shrimp and pasta.  Dinner is coming.

Darling du Jour: Liars, I thought, with not a little scorn. And then reconsidered it. Perhaps this was what Heron had meant: farmhands and soldiers, wanting to see their hero so badly that they conjured him, passed around stories of such sighting or such passing-by, because then someday that grace might touch them, too.
Mean Things: The tentative web of bullshit is starting to unravel at a really inopportune time for everyone involved.  Using sex as a weapon in a totally unconventional way (certain people around here are almost disturbingly calculating.  And yet?  Good guys).

Research Roundup: Whether rabbit is halal; more map stuff, which is ever-present on this project; the copyright status of the song we did in choir in grade 10 or 11, for an unofficial soundtrack Easter Egg.
Books in progress: matociquala, Range of Ghosts.

---

This be Chapter 12; at least most of it, and some of Chapters 13 and 14 where they suggested themselves.  No brilliance today, structural or otherwise: just knowing where I'm supposed to go, and taking it there one step at a time.

I also made challah.  But that's the sum of my output today.