So, I've been working my tail off, almost all on writing.  This is what I've been doing.

It is 5:32AM. 

I know Tina W is screaming at the thought, but I am her polar opposite in that, because when I am rested, I really, really love the early morning, the earlier the better.  I don't enjoy much before 5AM, because I get tired too early and crash.  I was just saying to Caryle and Jeff the other day that I am one of those people who starts at a peak and goes downhill all day, which is why I like to write very early in the morning.  When I get to the revision bit of this one, it will be done in the early morning.  I plan to let Anna stay up a bit later in the evening in hopes of setting her internal clock to "wake around nine or ten" except for horse camp mornings, so that I can rise at 5 and write in perfect peace and silence until then.  Because that's my other favorite thing about the morning--nobody else around here loves it the way I do, so it's all mine, Blake, it's all mine . . . .

Today will not be that case exactly, as I have to teach at 8:30 and get Anna prepped before that, but I'll still get a bit in before hand, even if it's mostly processing.  I hadn't exactly planned to blog babble, but it's feeling good.  I answered comments and then felt like talking more, so here we are.

I did not get to the end of chapter eleven, but it was better that way.  I was really getting tired and strung out, all sorts of energy in wrong directions, plus some freak out.  Poor Dan thought FINALLY he would get to watch the latest Doctor Who episode, but no, I couldn't do it.  I had to go to bed.  He did, though, give a very lovely massage.  GOOD MAN.  No, you can't have him.

But as my mother always said, though it drove me crazy when I was a kid, things always look better in the morning.  And that's good, because last night I was really strung out, not just from work but from stress.  I just can't see the forest for the trees, and I haven't since September on this one no matter how I try.  I have moments, but mostly I just don't know if this is working or if I have been killing myself for a pile of stinking garbage.  I know this can happen--I've had it happen to me, and I've seen it happen to others.  But there's no way to find out until I get to the end, and then I have to rest a bit, then revise, then show and see. 

I am sucking down the flower essences, though, especially "courage" because man do I need it.  Every now and again I read what I've written, I see where I"m headed and I think, "This can't possibly work."  Then I drop six more drops of "courage" in my cup and sip on, because there's nothing else to do.  It does help.  I'm also toking on "Dreams Come True," "Inspiriation," "Clear Spirit," and, my favorite, "Mental Focus."  I'm also talking to myself nonstop in my journal, autowriting like hell, stopping to yoga, to lift the three pound weights to stop my shoulder, and occasionally to hear some grounding nonsense from Anna, or to watch her play in the backyard.  I'm also remembering how last year the entire summer was given up to STB.  Never again.  Not for any piece of writing, not ever.  Life first.  People first.

Except this week.  This week it is a lot of story with a little Dan and Anna splashed on, and then next week I don't know.  Corner turned, new stuff. 

I've finished this story before, so this doesn't feel epic.  But it does feel different, so that's good.

Today I'm writing the last resolvey/buildup stuff before I get to the dark moment, and then it's straight on through the resolution and the little coda thing, which I found out yesterday is called "The Sea."  It's the first chapter with a title, and I'm very excited. 

I just hope it works.  Please, work.  Please do not be incoherent garbage I cannot revise.  Please just be assembleable so that I can show it to people and they get it.  That's all I want.  A contract would be lovely, but really, right now, I just want to see it down on paper.  That is the miracle I ask for.  I want to have it make sense to other people.  In a way that is beautiful and satisfying, and maybe, hopefully, just a little transforming . . . .

Back to work.




(P.S.  Nothing makes my toes tap like the woodblocks at the end of "I Think I Need A New Heart."  Just saying.)

I believe a few posts back I said I couldn't quite get into The Magnetic Fields.  I would like to retract that statement.

I don't love everything yet, but I'm beginning to comprehend that this is decidedly a group that grows on one like a fungus--whether you like it or not, it just keeps growing, and eventually you find yourself bobbing your head to the ukelele (or whatever it is--it sounds ukeleleish) on "With Whom To Dance," and you find yourself, as I did today, wheeling though the cereal isle singing "I Thought You Were My Boyfriend" under your breath. 

Maybe it's the Scorpio thing.  I have Scoripo Rising, which was a great source of amusement to me last fall when I sussed this out, because I've always been befuddled by Scorpio Suns.  I asked a friend who was to describe them to me, and I dutifully took notes, but privately thought, 'Glad I'm not one.'  Then I saw my natal chart and thought, "Whoah."  But apparently one of the gigs about Scorpios is the skin shedding.  Scorpios can, apparently, shed selves or careers or whatever as need be--reinvention in whatever way in necessary.  I suppose I do do this, in my way.  I do think The Magnetic Fields feed my inner Scorpio, that passion and zeal and off-beatness that my Virgo Sun loves to shudder over in horror.  They're just weird, but beautiful, too.  Like "All The Umbrellas In London."  But ridiculous, like "Yeah! Oh Yeah!"  And obscure, both mourning and self-mocking in "I Thought You Were My Boyfriend."  The lyrics are often very, very bad, so bad that they are brilliant.

I pulled them out this afternoon after a major writing blitz--10k according to Scrivener, but a lot of that was pasting-in of old stuff and tweaking.  Whatever--I'm cleared of chapter ten and sailing hard into chapter eleven, and I've just made coffee.  I plan to stay up pretty late and/or get up early and cruise through the end of eleven today. 

I also, for trivia, did five loads of laundry, went to both Target and the grocery, and picked up Anna by bike.  It's a weird effect of the zeal.  I actually have to spread it everywhere or it's too much.  Which is why I think The Magnetic Fields are good--I'm thinking very seriously of writing to them for the rest of the night, even through the big spell casting/major argument/resolution between Madeline and Jonathan.  It will be a fantastic irony of tone, but in an odd way, that feels right.

Right now The Magnetic Fields are feeling like a good bridge between my sun and rising, that straightlaced Virgo taskmaster and the Scorpio freewheeling hellraiser.  My Virgo listens to The Magnetic Fields and blanches, winces, and thinks, Oh, God, they're a little . . . . mmm.  And my Scorpio laughs throatily and says, Mmmm is right.  Turn them up.

Meanwhile, my poor moon in Cancer wrings her hands and says, Oh, dear, I hope they don't fight again.  Maybe we should just go eat some ice cream. . . . .

Anyway.

I am going to finish chapter eleven today.  Period.  And then tomorrow I will do my best with twelve, and then it gets nebulous because I thought it was twelve with a coda, but I do think there's a fourth act and a quick fifth in there.  We'll see.

Dancing on, dancing on.

I officially have two of the three acts of the completely and totally revamped THE WITCH'S APPRENTICE, formerly A TOUCH OF STEEL.  Generally, I am tired, confused, and surprised, but also very quietly happy.

I don't know about the fencing stuff.  I think that will be in book two, which is one of the surprises, both that there will be a book two with a lot of Madeline and Jonathan and that the fencing will be there.  I always thought the fencing was part of the building back trust, and I think it still is, but it turns out that like any good partnership, hooking up is just the beginning.  Since Madeline is SO much more resistant in this version, it makes sense that they hook up here somewhat tentatively and largely because of an extreme crisis; while they really do form a partnership and erase a lot of the old hurts, they by no means are sitting on a veranda sipping tea and trading newspaper headlines from here on out, so I suppose.

The bondage stuff is so still in there.  So fans of that can relax.  Also, I am personally fangeeking over the spellcasting stuff, which probably means it is over the top and too much, but I'm having a ball writing it.

It really, really is Charles's book, but he's really just the spearhead of the theme, which I wish I could tell you about but I still don't know.  There is something about androgyny, but it's not really that.  That's just part of it.  Definitely it's about change, but that's so generic I don't know why I bring it up. 

I do not yet know what the damn plot is.  I blame the ghost monks.  They are clearly going to tell me only at the last minute.

The second draft polish is going to need more than just a buffing cloth, but I'm at peace with that.  I'm not going to wait as long as I originally thought, either.  I'm going to get act three down, collapse and drink a bottle of wine by myself and probably bawl, because it's what I do, and then I will garden or paint for a few days, then dive in there and get gritty.  And then I have no idea.

But I am in act three, and I will be heading to the end shortly.  So on it goes.  Four more chapters, maybe with a short coda one on the end.  Because while I like twelve, something in me says there should be a thirteen.  But maybe not.  I'm sure the ghost monks know and just won't tell me.

The other thing that I am sort of going "huh!" over is that I am realizing that this is completely, utterly, entirely, not a romance.  At all.  There are many love stories, and I bet it could be marketed as one if someone was determined, but it is not a romance story.  It's not really a fantasy story, either, but it might be a fairy tale.  I would like it to be a fairy tale, but right now I will settle for "it is a novel" and be quietly content.

And now I can't possibly say another word, because it will all escape.  But this is what I have been trying to say.  Don't know why it took me so long.

I've been meaning to post, either something waxing or humorous or clever or even just a sum up of NYC, and the latter WILL happen eventually, maybe beginning today.  But I can state with certainty that the reason I'm not is Charles's fault once again, but in a good way.  It's just that I can't talk about it because I've become incredibly superstitious.  I can't let the magic out.

Though you may be able to suss out the nature of it from the incredibly rough but accurate new Curio title page, which I would post except it's not quite right.  Which means I'm off to fuss, and then to write.  All day.

The running joke around here is that I do not sleep before big events.  The most famous is that on the night before my wedding I slept exactly one hour, and spent most of the night obsessively playing mahjong.  (I got a high score I never did beat again on that computer, that nobody ever did.)  It's always been like this, to the point that sometimes I court it: before I went to England, a friend of mine got me drunk on Jameson's, I slept about two hours, spent the day straightening my brain again, then came around just in time to be completely unconscious during the entire flight from exhaustion.

Last night I was determined to be differnent.  I cleared my head naturally.  Then I had wine anyway.  I had a nice massage from Dan, and he relaxed me and made me giggle and happy, and I went to bed blissful and content.

3AM, I'm awake. 

It's not the trip this time!!!  I'm taking that as an improvement.  It was a dream this time, a very "hot" one--not erotic, but vivid and . . . timely, I guess.  I woke from it with that urgent must-act feeling, angry that my pad and paper were downstairs, so I just tried to remember it go back to sleep.  Big mistake.  My mind shifted gears and started writing the first two scenes of Etsey Book II.  THEN they had my attention.  That was the next opening?  What?  The dream with Kevin Costner?  Really?  What?  Then I listened, and then I lay there in bed, jaw dropping . . . .

Then beside me Anna began to sing "Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer" in her sleep, and I giggled.

Tried to find pen and paper anyway.  Found paper.  No pen.  So I got up, wrote it down in my journal, typed up the bit my conscious brain had already puttied onto it, and then, because I was here, wandered to my google homepage, where once again the horoscope bombarded me.

There are good times to be had, yet you won't be allowed to join in the fun until you are done with your chores. If there's too much to do, prioritize your work so you finish as much as possible. Your ruling planet Mercury changes signs tomorrow, pushing you into a whole new set of projects. Even if you feel somewhat scattered, rely on your greatest strength and concentrate on the details.

But it's for anybody who digs the Curio pages, really.  It's just that I know Caryle will particularly enjoy a whole tonnage of Charles photos.

This one actually has a different name than the one given in the image, but it's a total spoiler, so I changed it to something else.  Dan knows, though.  He knows everything.  And while I'm on the subject, please give it up for Dan, husband extraordinare who today, in his continual line of duty as He Who Listens To All Heidi's Plot Babbles And Manages To Appear Interested Every Time, Fooling Even Her--well, I wrote a tonnage today, probably close to 13k, and he sat there listening attentively as I told him everything that happened in everything I wrote and rewrote, and how excited I was by it, and what made me sad, and happy, and surprised.  Good man, that Dan.

Anyway.  Here's Charles and Madeline's page.

I always get that song stuck in my head when I'm up in the middle of the night.  It's not Maroon 5.  Who sings it?  God, it's on the tip of my tongue.  Hah!  Matchbox Twenty.  (I cheated and searched in the iTunes store.)

Well, at any rate, it is 3AM, but I'm not lonely.  I'm just awake.  I think parts of my brain had a war, and the part that wanted to stay up late and keep writing played guerrilla warfare with the part that fairly insisted I go to bed.  Here I thought all my various provinces were working in harmony, but it turns out one bit was just waiting for enough sleep to make a new attack.  Well, I don't work tomorrow, and Dan's taking Anna to school.  Why not.

It's Charles's fault, anyway.  His and Timothy's.  They had such a good scene going, and I hated to stop.

The nicest news of 3AM is that as of right now I have 129k, and 50k of them are sequential and make sense with one another in order, and they begin at the beginning.  The introduction there now still isn't the one I'll keep, but it gets closer all the time.  I've completely made peace with the fact that it will be a narrative intro in omniscient, thereby freeing it to now insist it will be something else entirely.  That's fine.  I'm a pillar with deep roots. The water can just slosh around me.  It's going to take a lot to wear/erode me away, and I'll just keep refortifying. 

But speaking of Timothy.

All but one of you (and anyone who reads my last.fm page, I suppose) won't get what I'm going on about unless I explain: I am on a hermitage here, yes, but for social outlets outside of stuff with Dan and Anna, I let carylerg and jeffreyjingles (and sometimes mary35) drag me out of the house or invade it, but other than that I superpoke people on facebook or do silly shouts on last.fm.  I run hot and cold on both, and I'm sure I come off as flaky and fickle at times, but since the sites lend themselves to it, I indulge.  And as anybody who has shouted at me on last.fm has figured out, if you start a conversation with me there, I will probably keep conversing back until it dies of its own accord or one of us wanders off in search of a new mug of tea.  So, backstory given, all but the last bit: yesterday evening I was "shouting" with youngdaniel, though he's known as idiotsdream there.  (Actually, Daniel, I've been meaning to ask you the why of that.)  The conversation started out as my letting him know I was joining him in the Massive Attack love because I was writing Timothy, which prompted him to ask about Timothy, which led to a discussion of what celebrity "plays" him, which led to my trying to post the .mac link to his page, which didn't work, which ticked me off and prompted me to open Curio at 3AM and try to re-export it.  Except when I opened the page, I frowned, and thought, "No, that's not right."

And then I did something incredibly wonderful for myself.  I did a google image search for "spanish men."  Oh, please.  Stop reading now and go do it.  Seriously.

Okay--Timothy is not Spanish.  He's "Catalian," and before you say, "What the hell is that?"  It's a made up country: Catal.  Why Catal?  I don't know.  Because when I was on my pissy "Fine, I WON'T write in Europe, I'll just rename everything!!!" tear, that's what "the southern country on the coast" became.  And now it's nothing like Spain.  But I digress.  I know that the people who populate Catal have darker skin than, say, Ewan McGregor (aka, Charles), and I know that the men are very very very very very pretty.

So, Spain.  And Brazil.  And with "brazillian actor," I hit paydirt. 

Nothing but story stuff.

Still working--just getting started for the evening, in fact.  I'm sort of waiting for a load of laundry to finish in the dryer and am waiting for Anna and the cats to settle down a bit more before I get serious.  We had a very eventful afternoon/evening as Anna took her first fall from her horse at riding lessons, which caused great trauma, but she got back on, which we stressed was very brave and very good horsewomanship.  She had a consolation Icee and got to tell her war story, and it was good.  We also did a bit of Target shopping for a long-overdue rug for Anna's floor, and I ended up adding a body pillow and new coverlet for Anna (she's had Teletubbies since she was two; it seemed time), both Hello Kitty, and then Dan and I got a VERY long overdue bed redo.  Tonight I will sleep on damask sheets and under a white cotton blanket with a new striped comforter. Yes, it was a big bill.  I think that is the last fun/necessary of the tax return, alas.  (Will try to do photos tomorrow.)

I'm in one of those odd pockets of time between obligations where technically I could write, but given how much I've written today, how much laundry there is to fold and how little I've been so much as in the same room with Anna, I feel like I should put that off until evening.  It doesn't matter that Anna is playing a computer game and that folding towels isn't playing with her; I learned long ago that little is more unnerving that a mother who is completely inanimate except for clicking fingers.  That's better saved for tonight, heading to "bed" early in my office so she can read books and snuggle and listen to my music, when my clicking fingers and eerie silence seem more appropriate to her. 

Still, I'm feeling like I have Thoughts to plunk down, so here we are again. 

Writing really has been going fantastically well.  Yesterday was more time spent with friends and having the now legendary date to watch Arthur Live! with Anna (godawful to my tastes, but she liked it, so there we are), but I still wrote the minimum 1500k.  It's actually been more of a daily average of 5-6K lately, with the insane Saturday performance likely to be mirrored tonight and tomorrow.  I'm hitting that nice groove when the moon and hormones are right and I'm far enough along in the story that things just plain move, and the feeling of excitement and freshness is lingering somehow, which I am very, very grateful for.  I'm spending my off-time doing bare-scans of internet and indulging in a long, slow immersion into the archives of Neil Gaiman's journal.  I just finished 2001 last week, which was as you can imagine quite a ride, given that included the launch and tour of American Gods, but also included the WTC bombings.  Of course, occasionally real-time entries come through on my feed, so there's an occasional sense of time-continuum (wow, that's really spelled with two "u"s.  Amazing.) distortion, but I'm getting by.

Today I'm overstuffing myself with E.S. Posthumus, watching little bits of Etsey Book II and mabye even III (or four, not sure if it's before or after mermaids) open up, and just generally thinking.  Wrote Emily and Stephen again, finally getting my handle around their plot at 80k in.  So, clearly their scenes will be revised extensively.  Mostly, though, I'm just thinking. 

Frequent thoughts are a quiet realization that what I'm actually doing is the opposite of what I have always done in the past.  Usually I write the first draft in a sort of a trance and a dangerous vacillation between euphoria and despair, and usually at about this point in the story I start to worry about how I'm ever going to fix all the things I can see are wrong but am too exhausted and strung out to fix, and the euphoria is starting to swing a lot harder towards the despair.  This time I've felt moderately detached most of the time I've written the first draft, knowing it's 90% mess but too focused on just getting a draft of any kind out to care, let alone obsess, and now when I have traditionally started seriously freaking out I'm finding a strange calm.  Oh, yes, there is much, much work.  But I can see how to do it.  I've never been able to do that before.  I feel like I should be crying or having a big dramatic set piece scene here--in the movie of my life there would be E.S. Posthumus music and I'd clutch the sides of the iMac and whisper a tearful, "Yes!  That's it!" before they panned back and did a montage of me writing furiously through several weeks to the end, noting the arrival of the leaves, the piling up of the tea bags, the sun glinting off my glasses on my face full of hope.  In real time, mostly I'm just feeling very glad, and relieved, and hoping that feeling stays, and that it leads me safely both to the end and into revision.  I am playing E.S. Posthumus, though.

Maybe I'm not feeling dramatic because it's so surprising to me.  I mentioned, many many many months back now in some post I happened to reread the other day that I felt like I was mucking out rooms after a flood.  Well, I feel like I've just cleared out one of the important rooms only to find treasure I thought was lost, but rather treasure I had never hoped to find--or, rather, treasure I'd longed for but did not believe I could own, be it a matter of worth or skill or simply luck.  I didn't think I had it.  Now I feel like I'm standing down and looking at IT, a little hesitant to believe that I might actually be holding it, and whether or not someone might be coming to reclaim it, because clearly this isn't something I brought here. 

Of course, the logical answer says that it came in with the muck.  This is why we must always be grateful to muck, and always be very careful about hating those that bring us the muck, because they're usually doing just this, carrying in treasure that can only be delivered if hidden in slime.

I feel a little strange, actually, at feeling like I might be closing off a real, real story that I know how to talk about, that I love passionately, that I wouldn't care at all if it were just a pdf I posted on my blog or if it came with a pretty hardback cover.  I don't quite know how to behave. 

E.S. Posthumus helps.  It makes your entire life feel like a movie soundtrack, all sweeping and glorious and emo, even if you really are just sitting there at your keyboard, stunned and saying, "Oh," often, and very quietly.

New icon--that's Katya.  (Well, Natalie Portman, but you know how this works by now.)  Used because in addition to Charles waltzing all over the plot of Madeline's story, I tried to make cookies today and ended up frozen over the kitchen sink as a perfect, crystalline opening to the Katya/Charles story downloaded into my brain.  And you know, I went with it, because I knew it would be heady and rich and deliciously taboo, not just because that's what Charles and Katya are but because I knew it was verbotten to switch to a different story.  I did it anyway, and it wasn't a switch--I'll write another scene from TWA before bed, if not two.  It's all good. 

Writing was, too.  It was like having a different bed partner for the night--new moves, new twists, everything fresh and wonderful because my brain has not been gnawing at it like a rabid thing.  I'm enjoying a little bit of afterglow, listening to the wrong soundtrack and watching a few scenes unfold in my mind, letting it ripple and sway, and then in a few minutes I'll switch back, and it will be done again for now.

I think it's so good because it's so wrong.  There is at the very least one book between TWA and Charles and Katya, at least, and so much of this story I don't know.  Except this story, like none other, just writes itself.  I just sit back and dictate.  I reread the other scene I took down from dictation last time, and my jaw was on the floor.  I don't remember writing half of it, and there's this made up foreign language in there that I was just impressed as hell by, and then I realized I had written that.  God, that's a fantastic scene.  I have absolutely no idea what it means.  The one I wrote tonight isn't as wowza pow! but still has lots of OMG COOL in it, like all this magic stuff Charles does, and he just does it, and I'm thinking, well, neat!  How and why are you doing this?  Which is of course why there are several books between.  The only thing I know is that he gets his head cut off.  That's IT.  That's absolutely all I know.

This is the statue I put on the side of the document while I wrote.  It's not the right statue, but it had the right emotion for the scene.  Statues are VERY VERY important in this story.  VERY VERY. 



I will say that it's a real treat--and I mean it--to write Charles three/four/whatever books out and then go back to the beginning.  I'm starting to wonder if every damn book about Etsey will be about him, sort of like Miles Vorkosigan.   Well, the mermaid one won't be.  Still.  I suspect he'll show up or be referenced.  But he is so fascinating.  I've never seen a character like him, and I'm not tooting my horn here.  Charles always just walked on--I never created him at all.  In fact, I have to work to get out of his way, because he wants a harder road than I'd ever give him.  He's so my favorite.  I'm just going to give in and admit that.

Katya's not bad, either.  I don't understand her yet, but I'll say this--Charles is a really tough character to match a mate to without making them tragic or little more than a foil or stock, but she is really, really rising to the challenge.

The only frustrating thing is that those scenes are so cool, but I won't be able to share them with anybody for years.  YEARS.  Though I admit I am increasingly tempted to ruin carylerg and show them to her, because she's Charles's biggest fan and has been less and less subtly saying LET ME READ SOMETHING, and here I am wanting to show somebody. It's just cruel, though, because they're really out of sync, and worse, if she liked them, it'd be years before she got any resolution, and knowing me, I'd change it all.  I like her too much for that.

Sigh.  Writing really is a lonely profession.

Good thing I have Katya and Charles to keep me company.

It's still Madeline's story, but Charles is certainly elbowing his way as close to center as he can.  He just nabbed center stage at the midpoint, however, which is at this particular second more towards the end than the middle, but heigh ho.  He also sent a ripple all the way back to the beginning, changing several important bits, but they were all good changes and make everything tighter.  I feel like I've been working madly (and I do mean madly) on a corset for seven months and all of a sudden it got up off the table and laced itself. 

Everything is also radically different than I expected, and yet right where it should be. 

I think I'm borrowing from the characters, too.  Madeline has this trick where she takes things she can't think about right now and puts them on a mental shelf, to deal with later. It's a part of her training as a witch, but because of a complication in the story she has to create a second mental shelf, deeper and wider than the first.  I feel like I have one or both of those, and  I'm stuffing a lot of panic and anxiety up there, which I know when it gets full because all of a sudden it's ALL THERE.  So then it's time for one of the chakra CDs or just general zen or some primal screaming.

I'm still missing the heady rush.  I had one brewing up this morning, but then somebody in footie pajamas shuffled into the office.  Maybe tonight I can jack up on tea and coffee and licorice and stay up really, really late . . . .

Today I have to run several errands downtown, one of which involves buying a stuffed walrus, and I'm really looking forward to that.  We also have to hit member day at the co-op, which is also very fun.  I'm also on deck to make cookies this afternoon, and possibly some homemade noodles.  Or not.  But really, it's just fun, fun, fun, all day.

I stopped writing with 1,111 words in the scene, with Jonathan facing the hardest temptation he's had yet, and as soon as I wrote it I knew he'd resist it here but have to take it up at the climax.  Feeling bouncy and good and happy, actually.

Here are the photos I have propped next to me in Scrivener.  I just found out that when I'm working in full screen mode I can shift the paper to the left or right and prop the photos off to the side in the notes/keywords window.  So as I wrote I had Enya and Stellamara singing to me, and this looking at me from the side.

Yesterday I briefly mentioned that writing was "going gloriously."  That's still true, and saying so didn't jeopardize anything, but I didn't realize until I went to bed just how gloriously it was going.  Scrivener keeps track of how many words you've written in a "session" (when you open and close the document), and lately I've been marking sessions as days, rewarding or punishing myself at bedtime with a summary of the count of words I've written that day.  It's sometimes padded, because it counts words you delete or something, but it serves as a more objective window to what you did than what you feel like you did, especially if you move in and out of documents/sections in your alloted work time. 

Well, yesterday it said I wrote 14 thousand words.

I knew that was crap--that's the kind of work you get done when you get up in the morning, sit there all day, get up only to restart the coffee and pee, and maybe gurgle occasionally into the mirror watching the spittle run over your chin.  Yesterday I didn't go to work nor to Anna's school to volunteer because of the weather, and I did sit down to write quite a bit, but in addition to that I cleaned out my email inbox (YES!!!!), mailed  birthday cards to my dad, made a pair of pajama pants for Dan, worked (twice) to get a car out of the driveway, had a lovely chat and dinner with my inlaws (who helped get the car out), took Anna to her horse riding lesson, read a book to Anna at bedtime, blogged twice . . . .  I think it's possible I even unloaded the dishwasher.  I mean, it was a full day.

But when I added up just the word counts for the scenes I wrote yesterday, I came up with 12K, and that was rounding down. 

What this tells me, and to my surprise, is that I have in fact reached that elusive magic bubble which means I am now in fact going to get to the end, unless I have a panic attack or start to self-sabotage.  I've been here before when I've tried to finish drafts, and I remember what it felt like reaching STB here, and previous drafts of ATOS and the few other stories I've come to the end of a draft on.  However, I have to say this is the first time in a long, long time that I've come to this point not feeling like I'm running a train at ninety, ready to shudder off the track at any second.  Usually at this point I am socially dysfunctional, myopic to the point of danger, manic, paranoid, and jumped up like a crackhead.  I don't feel any of that this time.  I just feel normal, with occasional stomach burbles and a weekly need to crouch into the fetal and maybe cry quietly, but I think that has more to how little I'm allowing anyone into my process this time, how vents here are the only release I'm allowing myself, save occasional incomprehensible story monologues at Dan, who remains as ever the most sainted man in the universe.  (Also the cats, but they aren't sainted.  They're cats.)  I don't think there's a cause and effect between the withholding and the sanity--I'm almost positive I'd be easier without it, but a lot of that junkie reaction in the past was my pathalogical need for reassurance that what I am doing will not destroy me, that I'm okay, that the story doesn't suck, that putting it out there won't expose me too much or in a way I don't expect.  The stomach aches and occasional fetal position whimpers are very likely because I am getting myself through this by telling myself that yes, there very well may be stuff in here I don't want exposed, I'm almost guaranteed the sorts of bad reactions I fear, at least by some, and in general everything I fear very likely will come true because I fear it and am giving it so much energy, and there's no way out now but through it, so buck up.  I try to mix in the good stuff, too, but with me the good stuff pales next to the fear of the bad, so I'm just wading, nailing myself up to the cross of my own design, and forging on.

But it's really weird to get to this familiar head space and be so healthy about it--especially given all the paranoia I just confessed.  I feel like the chariot driver in the Major Arcana of the Tarot, actually, when she's healthy--driving on the wild beasts of her creativity and power at high speed, everything at a moment's crisis, but managing it, appearing calm, maybe even scary.  But doing it.  I'm never fond of that card for the long term, but it's good for getting places, so I'll take it for now.

I don't normally like to deliberately call on my blog readers to respond, but I'm going to do so today.  If I were active on the cherry loops right now I'd ask this there, but I'm not, so I'm asking here instead--but even as I ask, please don't feel you need to comment.  I know what a treasure lurking can be, and I'll never begrudge anybody for silence here.  That said, if you have an impulse to answer this and help me sort out a mental knot, I'd love your help.

And if enough of you want the spoiler so you can discuss more in-depth, I'll create a filter and we'll go that route.  Until then, the question.

How much do you like an author to withhold, and how much do you like an author to give away?

My personal take on this question is tricky, which is why I've come to this conundrum, I'm sure.  As a reader, I really do love a good mystery and revelation, but the ones I love are dear not because of the secret itself but because the act reveals so much about story and character.  I think it's why as the Harry Potter series wore on I enjoyed less and less, because the revelations either weren't such revelations any longer, just veils finally lifted, and many of them, particularly the deaths, seemed sloppy and even crude, or worse, predictable.  Unlike the exposés say in Bujold's series, like Mark's very existence and transformation, and like what Cordelia brought back from her shopping trip.  The way knowing Darth Vader is Luke's father is a great surprise but is still a moving moment every time you see it, even if you watch it for the first time knowing that's going to be revealed.  So I'm loving a good gasp moment, but I love the moment more than the gasp, if that makes sense.

I have a gasp moment with Charles--I don't yet know how it's going to be revealed, and I'm finding myself annoyed by the decision of how secret to keep his secret.  I don't want it to jump on the reader, but I don't want to ruin a potential unfolding lotus, either.  Part of this is that HE does not know the secret, and I'm having trouble deciding how many characters in the story know, either. 

It's a secret regarding his identity, and identity is a huge, huge theme in this story--who are you, who are you of, how much do your roots truly define you, how much of your destiny do you create for yourself, etc. There's a lot of back and forth between characters, some who want to believe they are Fate's plaything but really are just avoiding making hard decisions, and some who truly are gripped in forces more powerful than they are.  The antagonist--I said the other day it was the aunt, and she's definitely Pawn Number One, but the biggest antagonist is back to being more of a paranormal force, so it's sort of Sauron and Sauruman (can't spell them, please forgive) setup.  Charles is not the main character of this story, but his position on this spectrum is the most unclear; in his usual way, he is on both sides in everything.  He is the most controlled by Fate but is also the one most required to make his own decisions, and the decisions he makes will alter him radically, with ripples it will take him decades to fully comprehend.

The secret is the lynchpin for all this, and I can't decide how to let it out.  I'm thinking of Michael Clayton, of how we know about Mr. Verne and what his goal/assignment is long before Michael does, and I'm thinking maybe that's the way to go.  But then I think how good that gasp feeling is, and how the reason the MC plot with Verne's role exposed only serves to heighten the tension so we know when to be nervous and why.  I don't know what it serves for me to reveal the secret to the reader, save to avoid confusion.  If that's the only reason, I'm being a lazy writer.

I think I'm leaning towards keeping the secret for now, and it's just draft one of this version, so it's all in flux anyway.  But if you are so inclined, tell me about when and why and how you like secrets in stories, and also when you dislike them.  If nothing else it will become a debate of several voices in my head instead of just the ping pong match of my own mind.

If there are a lot of comments, or if it feels right, I might not comment back so that I don't get in the way, or I might wait to comment.  And if nobody comments then I will have learned my lesson to just let people read and not make them do blog homework, which will also be valuable.

Just sitting down to really get some work--one last laundry switch and then it's me and a timer.  I wasn't going to blog at all today, but I was so pleased with this Curio that I had to share, for those who are interested in following the ATOS/TWA developments and lackthereof like a daily soap opera.  Today it's a good day.